Vandalism

I was reading about George Whitefield this morning, an evangelist who was a friend and associate of John Wesley's in England during the Methodist Revival. Whitefield and Wesley had some sharp differences—Whitefield, for instance, was a Calvinist Methodist and Wesley...well, he wasn't—but they remained close friends. Wesley preached Whitefield's funeral.

Anyway, I knew all that. What struck me this morning was a word Whitefield used to describe sin. Now, I've preached a lot about sin. Many sermons, many words used to describe our rebellion against God. But in twenty years of preaching, I've never used this word to describe it. Whitefield called sin vandalism.

Vandalism.

For many, that word brings up images of urban blight, poverty-stricken areas that have been defaced by painting and vulgar words. You don't have to travel very far from my home to be able to see...well, graphic examples.

But that word, to me, also brought back images of my trip to Rome in 2010. Rome is a wonderful city. I could have spent much more time exploring than the three days we were there. But one of the first things I noticed, on the day we went from our hotel to the Coliseum, was that there was a lot of vandalism on the shops and streets of Rome. This ancient city, this place of pilgrimage for many, is defaced by vandals who apparently don't have anything better to do with their time.

It saddened me. Some of those buildings are hundreds of years old, and there they sit with glaring graffiti. So I asked our guide, Daniela, why Rome (the city) doesn't clean it up. "It's a matter of economics," she told me. "It simply would cost too much. Many of these buildings are ancient, and the damage done to them by the clean-up would be worse than the vandalism." So it stands. Vandalism.

Two years later, I was in Cairo, Egypt, about a year after the Arab Spring and the revolution that has ended in mixed results (or has it ended?). Everywhere we went in this ancient city, there was trash. Bags and bags of trash, some broken and spilling out into the canals and roadways. Ugly, awful trash. People picnicking in the midst of trash. Our guide, Mohamed, told us the trash was the people's way of protesting that things weren't changing quickly enough. Destroying their own neighborhoods and way of life in order to rebel and send a message to the government. Why wasn't it cleaned up? Too expensive. Vandalism. It was ugly.

So is sin. And that's why Whitefield's word struck me. It's so appropriate. Sin destroys and defaces everything that is beautiful in our world and in our lives. Its damages everything God is trying to do in our hearts. But unlike the situation in Rome and in Cairo, the one who owns it all is willing to pay whatever price it costs in order to repair the damage and remove the vandalism. He's even willing to give the life of his Son in order to rebuild the lives that are broken by the vandalism of sin.

As Paul once said -- Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!